How do I change audio channel mapping?

Questions
1

I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with Debian, I’m still trying to find my way around Linux. I have it connected to a 65 inch LG display through a pretty serious Yamaha AVR. After using it for a web browser for a while I decided to try multi-channel audio. It was less than successful.

I found that in 5.1 mode only the left front speaker gets the correct audio. Otherwise I have the right rear sound playing through the center channel, Right front signal playing through the left rear speaker, and so on.

There has to be a file or GUI somewhere to reconfigure this so the correct sound goes to the correct speakers. I don’t even know where to start in trying to figure this out.

2

I can’t speak to 5.1, but I’m using a 2 channel DAC which plugs into the PI board to feed my audio collection to my stereo. I got it from https://www.hifiberry.com

3

This sounds like a channel-mapping issue where the Raspberry Pi isn’t routing 5.1 audio correctly over HDMI. Check whether you’re using ALSA, PulseAudio, or PipeWire, and make sure a 5.1 profile is selected. Tools like pavucontrol, alsamixer, or custom asound.conf mapping can fix incorrect channel assignments.